Welcome to Announcements. This area can only be posted to by the Admin. It is for passing on info from the Discussions administrator and also from the Japan With Kids Webmaster.
By Admin on Sunday, July 23, 2006 - 10:33 pm:

For the last 6 hours, I temporarily re-opened the General Discussions only. There were 74 new "texas hold em" spams in the message queue as a result. So there is still more work to be done. I will leave them open a bit longer so people can post before heading for bed. But I will close them again for the night just to prevent any huge pile up such as I had after I was gone for 2 days. I realize this is very damaging to the spirit of the discussions. Also since I am on vacation now in the USA, I am using a 26.6k average dial-up modem most of the time. So it is difficult to do anything quickly. I'm doing what I can over the weekend.

How you can help: * Unless new information is being added to the discussion, post "thank you" messages directly to the person that they are thanking. * Do not post the same message more than once to the message queue. * Combine "for sale" items into one message instead of posting several different messages consecutively. * Try to use blank lines carefully in your messages. Often a message that could be attractively written with only a few blank line returns may have double or triple that.

I have just finished clearing about 3700 spam messages out of the message queue and the new spam messages coming in are now at a (relative) trickle of about once every 15 minutes. In order to "harvest" the ISP numbers of incoming SPAM, I am going to allow a few to be posted. I apologize for the inconvenience. I will also process some legitimate messages (after culling the duplicates from people who didn't read the message telling them their message had been queued). Then I will be denying all access to the discussions for a few hours, while I try to work with the site host on reporting the ISPs of origin and denying them access at that level. Please bear with me.

2006 July 16: Due to an unprecedented number of spam attempts, from casinos, medicine sales companies and others, all topic posts will now be monitored by the moderator(s). Sorry, but we have now lost the instant posting function in all main topics and all sub-topics. Delays are to be expected, since the moderator(s) are currently on holidays in various places, or at work, etc.

Many of you already know that the discussions mysteriously broke down around midnight between 13 and 14 December.

This has now been fixed. I apologize for the inconvenience. The host (netnation.com) transferred all virtual sites over to new hosting software and new machines with new IP addresses in the early morning hours of the day I departed to Indonesia for the holidays. I can't do much from the super slow internet cafe connections available to me. The Netnation staff are the ones who finally fixed the cgi script pathways to get these discussions up and going again.

I'll be back in Japan on 6 January. Until then all new password requests, etc. will basically go unanswered.

Starting about 3 days ago I've been blitzed with the W32/Sobig.F@mm virus/worm

Fortunately my virus checker is working. I'm averaging about 35 emails received (but blocked) with the virus attached per day. I've also received two messages from friends informing me that my email address has been hi-jacked and is appearing in the from line of messages delivering the virus to them.

I just want everyone to know that my computer is virus free, and that if they appear to be receiving a virus from any address that ends in tokyowithkids.com, it is not really from me.

To all Forums users: Sometimes the "add a message" form disappears from the bottom of a discussion. I do not know why it happens, but I can fix it if I know it has happened. Please email me directly with the name and the URL of the discussion when you discover this, and I will get to it ASAP.

Referring to message of 29 May 2002, below, the problem with the wrong email address for the discussions support was finally fixed, a couple of months ago.

Also today, Horizon Japan International School, in Yokohama, posted the same message 9 times, each to a different discussion, but all under the main heading of "Education in Japan". They did not realize at the time that this was extremely close to "spamming" the discussions, and have submitted an apology, which I've accepted. I have not made a point of sending out posting guidelines to date, because this happens fairly rarely, and because I don't have time. However, if someone wants to write up some guidelines, preferably UNDER TWO PARAGRAPHS, I can include them in the welcome letter when people first register for the discussions.

The problem announced in the message dated 29 May 2002 below has, I think, been fixed now.

Please remember when you are addressing the admin with questions about your registration in the discussion forums, to include the username that you signed up with, if at all possible. (in other words don't throw away that email, the one with your original password and username!)

Hello, There is a minor problem with the discussion software. Emi[at]tokyowithkids.com is no longer a valid address for discussion forum trouble shooting, but I have not figured out how to change it. Please send all questions regarding the Japan With Kids discussion forums directly using the: contact admin button in the left hand (blue) column of this page.

Posting to the discussions and protecting your email address from spammers.

Your email address is protected from robots harvesting it provided that you do not list your email address within the post. Whenever I have spare moments I go in and change email addresses that people have posted over the last year or so, for example from s1033@aolg.com to s1033[at]aolg.com Needless to say I don't do this as much as everyone would like, but a little preventive effort by the people posting could go a long, long way. IF you want to include your email within the post, please write it so that a robot will not recognize it!

Spam is a heartache. I should know. My email address is unavoidably public because of the website and 50 - 60% of my incoming email is pure junk every day! So I am trying to show people that they can still participate in the discussions and protect their email address from being harvested.

Apologies to everyone for the spamfest that occurred early this morning on the part of "T.E.L.". It happens about once every two years. Please just delete all the messages and keep on with the stuff pertinent to living in Japan!